OT- Thunderbird ugliness, Was: Eudora email client source code released

[JP Hindin]

On Tue, 22 May 2018, Jon Elson via cctalk wrote:
> so I use Thunderbird on a Linux platform.  It is awfully slow. Sometimes it 
> takes 5 minutes to download 3 messages when I start it up.
>
> At home I use Thunderbird with standard Linux smtp and pop servers and it 
> works fine.

Apologies to hijack this one (I can't tell you how impressed I am with 
both the CHM's efforts and Qualcomm's release, I find these things really 
exciting for our hobby) - but I've been having real troubles with TBird in 
the last few years and my obstinacy has been holding me back.

I run Thunderbird on a 2016 MacBoook Pro (Sierra 10.12.6, 2.6GHz i7, 16GB 
RAM, internal SSD) where I'm pulling via IMAP from Google (their 
professional company service thingy), but maintain a local 24GB cache of 
eMail.

It's slower than molasses in january. Moving eMail around between 
'folders' often has it sit and spin the beachball for 2-3 seconds - dozens 
of times a day. And I just can't work out why - I mean, yes, it's a lot of 
ruddy eMail, but it's a monster of a laptop and it should be 
pulling/moving on the SSD when it's getting stuck before it's even tried 
to send the move message to google.

I _detest_ the gmail interface, I'd really prefer to continue using a 
client like this - but TBird just isn't getting any better.

What am I missing here? Are there better options? Is Thunderbird just not 
designed for large mail sets for people who actually work for a living?

Responses should probably be sent to me directly. And my thanks in advance 
for your opinions, my curmudgeonly behaviour is really eating up my time 
and I'm hoping there's a reasonable fix beyond "Suck it up and use gmail".

Cheers!

  - JP